For the Love of Turquoise!

Take a gander at my latest purchases! Aren't these beauties?! I went to a trunk sale yesterday and sold my first born son in order to get these. (Okay, so I exaggerate. It just took my left arm.) A guy from the Southwest stops in at various bead stores, as well as bead shows I believe, and opens up boxes and boxes and boxes of bead strands to sell.

The top left and center picture show all four strands that I bought. Starting with the upper right-hand picture and going clockwise are green pebble/potato turquoise beads I think he said these were from Arizona (it was really hard to keep them all straight as I was asking about a lot of different strands), Kingman turquoise pebbles and a strand of chunky, graduated beads from China. These are unbelievable! They're all about 4-5mm thick and range from 13-21cm wide. I think I'm going to have to sell at least 1/2 of this strand in order to get part of my left arm back. There is also a strand of uniform rondelle/disk beads that are from Arizona and are similar to Carico Lake turquoise (in the picture of all the strands). All of these beads have been stabilized and are natural color!!

This guy was really interesting to talk to. He talked about a mask that had been found in Mexico that contained turquoise from Kingman, AZ. He also told me about some ancient digging sticks found in an unearthed section of the Kingman mine. Truth or lore, who knows. It was entertaining to listen to. Well, that was my adventure for this weekend. Now to make something with all my pretties...